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May 20, 2020 at 2:36 PMMay 20, 2020 at 2:36 PM

Jim Bouton the pitcher was famous for a time for a few successful World Series appearances as a New York Yankee in the early 1960s. But Jim Bouton’s legacy was minted as a writer, and he reveled in that fame. “I loved being a medium celebrity,” he’d often say. “It’s a boost to the ego. But not enough to interfere with life.”

Fifty years ago, Bouton wrote “Ball Four,” an insider’s look at baseball and often the first book teen-aged boys read without it being a class assignment.

“Ball Four” was written in diary form and set in buses, bullpens, clubhouses and Bouton’s cramped hotel room with his wife and three small children. The book’s attraction at first was salacious tales of former teammate Mickey Mantle hitting a game-winning home run with a hangover, and players on hotel rooftops peering into the windows below. But the book is much more than about a game, as Mitchell Nathanson surmises in “Bouton: The Life of a Baseball Original” ($34.95, University of Nebraska Press; 407 pages), the first biography of Bouton.

“Ball Four” has sold more than 1 million copies since it was released in 1970. It is set during the 1969 season, when the 30-year-old veteran struggled to make the expansion Seattle Pilots. “Ball Four” is the only sports title on New York Public Library’s 1996 list of Books of the Century. Every decade from 1980 through 2010, Bouton released an update with new chapters.

Nathanson writes “Ball Four” is an examination of men’s feelings and emotions. It’s also hilarious. And men re-read the book because, as they get older, they are experiencing the same emotions Bouton does trying to remain in a kid’s game while facing fear of failure. As a member of the Pilots, and years before players made millions (the average MLB salary in 1969 was $25,000), Bouton is among a team of rejects who experience desperation and anxiety, plot pranks and try to hang on to their jobs.

But Bouton was different. He was smart, literate and had a knack for business. He supplemented his baseball income by starting a real estate business, rehabbing homes and renting them to businessmen and athletes. While his teammates avoided the press, he talked at length with reporters about the game, the Vietnam War, politics and books. This cluster of new sports journalists, who were often more interested in who the players were as people than what they did on the field, were known as the Chipmunks and they and Bouton fed off each other.

Nathanson uses contemporary quotes from the Chipmunks as a Greek chorus, explaining Bouton’s status with management, his teammates, 1960s culture and state of mind. New York Times writer George Vecsey noted, “Outwardly Bouton was much like his teammates in that he cursed and teased and contributed more than his share of clubhouse pranks. But he remained apart from them in deeper, more substantial ways,” Nathanson writes. “It was a vibe Bouton turned to again and again in his notes. … (“Ball Four”) explored that idea of loneliness beneath the mask of manliness that couldn’t help but be different than anything that had come before. And that’s what the book became - a book about people, not merely characters.”

Nathanson also quotes baseball historian and Bouton friend John Thorn. “Ball Four” is “not the product of an MA of English composition. It was not highfalutin language; it’s not fancy language. It’s a people’s work. The best writing is not elevated speech, but, rather, portraying people as they are.”

Nathanson explores Bouton’s writing process with his editor Leonard Schecter, a member of the Chipmunks, its reception and why it forever changed sports writing.

For a writer who spent most of his life telling his own story, Bouton and his wife Paula Kurman granted Nathanson unusual access prior to Jim’s death last June at age 80. They also pressed Nathanson to tell all sides of each encounter, including business squabbles, broken friendships and infidelities, as well as Jim’s experiments with hypnotism.

Nathanson’s source list is deep and insightful and his writing is crisp. And his access to Bouton’s “Ball Four” notes provides answers to some lingering questions.Peoria Journal Star Executive Editor Dennis Anderson can be reached at danderson@pjstar.com and on Twitter at @dennisedit.